Page 41 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

‘No,’ he said. ‘But sometimes they seem to know where I’m going.’ He inclined his head and the owl blinked slowly. ‘Everyone says they know things, don’t they?’

She grinned. There was a tug somewhere under her ribs, towards him and Yoruji. It felt slight but huge, and full of promise; like an anchor dropping at a home port after years at sea.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘What do you want for a wedding present? What do clairvoyants want?’

He looked around and went still. ‘I’d prefer a favour to a present.’

‘Favour?’

‘In a while, I might … need your help with something. Maybe dangerous. I don’t know exactly when yet, but if you’d consider helping me then, I’ll very happily take that for a present.’ He said it carefully, full of humility, as though the Duke was right there beside him hissing about witches and winter kings, and treating people like threads on a loom.

‘Joy,’ she said abruptly. That was what his name meant, in English. She’d started calling him that when he started calling her Pepper. ‘We’re not – talking about children, are we?’

‘No.’ He looked drawn, and his focus went far off. ‘I’m in no hurry there.’

‘Sorry,’ she said, aware that she’d ruined what should have been a nice evening. ‘It’s just – an abrupt marriage feels like being hurried into cab with no idea where you’re going. It’s not good. Even if you – you know. If you like the person who’s doing the hurrying.’

‘Well,’ he said, carefully, ‘I’m going to England in a few years. And then I won’t be back until … about eighteen ninety, I think.’ He smiled a little. ‘And then perhaps we’ll be used to each other enough to think about it. I don’t like being hurried either.’

‘How can you ever be hurried?’ Takiko said, a bit too high, because she wanted to cover over the sad flare of dismay in her stomach. Eighteen ninety; it was ten years away. ‘You always know what’s coming.’

‘Yes. It’s like standing on a conveyor-belt and watching the meat grinder get closer, and knowing already what life is like when you think it’s normal to have no arms.’

She hesitated. ‘Anything you need help with, in England? To … redirect the conveyor-belt?’

‘No.’

‘So I’m here to fight the Duke off for you and then sit on a bench until eighteen ninety or whenever you decide you’ve got a use for me?’ she said, puzzled. ‘I’m sure there’s more I can do than that.’

‘No.’ He looked worried. ‘Pepper … you needn’t do anything for me. I think I know what the Duke said to you today, and he’s right.’

‘Mori – I do have to. If you hadn’t come to sit with me in the theatre that day, Ayame would have swept me back onto the stage or boxed my ears until I did. I owe you everything. That debt is just going to sit on me forever unless I do something for you. You know that too.’ She sighed. ‘Don’t – tell me it’s frivolous or that saving me doesn’t count just because you didn’t do it on a battlefield.’

‘I wasn’t going to,’ he said quietly.

‘Right then. I have a debt, a genuine debt. Can’t you let me pay it?’

He let his breath out slowly. ‘Now this instant, it isn’t possible to turn the world by much. I … spend most of my time finding new half-formed Mozarts and Newtons and pushing them along in the right direction, because given enough time, they bring about change in a way revolutions and guillotines can’t. No one can help me with that. It’s finicky. But in eleven years, there will be a window when we can do a lot of good all at once, without making reactionary factions of nationalists or tyrants. I will do it, and I’ll need your help. But in those intervening years, you will see things that will make you wonder whether you should be helping me at all. You might very well come to the conclusion that I’m wrong entirely, and that your energy would be better directed elsewhere.’

She half laughed, because there were honest-to-God goosebumps prickling down her forearms. ‘My very own prophecy.’

‘Yes, we can frame it,’ he said, with a muted sparkle that didn’t have any humour in it at all. ‘Pepper, I need you to understand. When I helped at the theatre, I knew it would change everything for you, I knew you’d feel a debt. What I want to do in eleven years will be dangerous. I can’t pay someone to help me; a stranger won’t be any good, it has to be someone who knows me and knows what to look for. But I can’t ask anyone who actually likes me, either, because they would stop me doing it. What I need is someone who feels indebted to me but doesn’t wholly like me. Which you won’t, by the time it all comes around.’ He lifted both hands a little toward her. ‘So I sat down next to you.’

She snorted. ‘I knew you’d have a reason beyond my superlative feminine charms. But that’s not the point. The point is that I can’t be unique. There must be other people you can annoy and manipulate, right?’

He nodded, unhappy and brittle at the edges. ‘Dozens. So if you don’t want—’

‘Shut up. You didn’t choose any of them; you chose me. I don’t care if you decided on me because I’ve got a funny nose or you liked the candied nuts they were selling in the foyer that day: you still changed everything for me, and I owe it to you. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘And a small service is still a service,’ she finished quietly. ‘So we will be getting married, I will see the Duke off for you, and I will be owing you that favour.’ She hadn’t felt awkwardness like she did around him since she’d been about sixteen. It was a sad little crush. But there was good, in doing something for someone so extraordinary. Honour. It was one of those words you heard men chuck around all the time and, until lately, she’d never thought it might be for her as well. It felt so good that all at once, even though she’d always thought they were fools before, she understood why soldiers would go into battle for a suicidal commander.

The Duke’s voice was still there in the back of her mind, whispering about the loom and its bright threads: Her great trick was that she would let you see just what she was, and you would want to do as she asked all the same.

‘Pepper, I don’t want a servant,’ Mori said softly. For the first time since she’d met him, he came right up to her. For a long second, he looked down at her like nobody had, like she was something precious. He touched his forehead to hers. ‘I want someone to come back to.’

EIGHTEEN